The Phoenix Papers
by Captain Evermind
Summary: A collection of drabbles, centred on Severus Snape, from prompts by Snape100. Redemptionist, but decidedly bitter, with a strong emphasis on his Death Eater days. Includes random patches of humour, and the odd pairing.
1. Forgotten

A sallow, unsmiling face, roughened palm heavy on his shoulder. A low, cigarette-hardened whisper. "That's my boy."

Green eyes laughing, an impish face, swift brush of virgin lips, the scent of eglantine.

Slender, long-fingered hands, pale as ice. A wild, beautiful face, eyes glinting redly in the burning glow. His heart beating in his chest, and those white teeth bared in what might have been a smile.

His own curse, loud in his ears, and the slow, sad twinkling of tired eyes.

Pale fists clench about a black wand. He has forgotten what it is like to feel loved.


	2. Mandrakes

Finally, he stops, breath coming in ragged, shuddering gasps. The boy, defiance forgotten, clutches his hand; white-gold hair, so like Lucius', in tangled disarray.

He reaches into his pocket, searching for the key, but it is gone. His fingers close about something gnarled, shrivelled and hostile. A tiny, twisted corpse, the face frozen in an expression of hate. Dimly, he remembers retrieving it from the cupboard in his potions room. It had been in his hand when Flitwick crashed through the door.

"_Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative..."_

His fist tightens convulsively, crushing the useless root into dust.


	3. Of Tristram and Aurelius

**Author's Note:** The prompt here was Severus Snape and an OC.

Five, to dispatch the Prewetts. Himself, Antonin, Bellatrix, and two brothers whose names he doesn't know.

Removed, he observes their whispered argument. One proud and scornful, golden haired, grey-eyed. The other, his counterpart in every way, menacing, withdrawn: dark shadow to bright sun. Watching, Severus is reminded of a woman he had almost forgotten.

"...Blood-traitors... More than traitors!" The golden brother snarls.

"Have you forgotten," asks the other, low and angry, "That Fabian is betrothed to our sister?"

"May she have joy of him in hell!"

Later, when the Prewetts lie dead, Severus learns their names. Tristram and Aurelius McGonagall.


	4. Unfinished Letters

His search through the smouldering ruin is meticulous. Black robe untouched by dust, black gaze masked, impassive.

The body sprawls limply, partially protected from the inferno beneath a once-fine writing desk. Fleetingly, his pale fingers caress the charred wood. Mahogany.

The desk's contents, peculiarly, are almost unscathed: Singed parchment, broken quills, a ring. A thirty year old edition of _Circe's Botanical, _which he pockets.

With detached competence, he searches the body. It does not take long to find, clasped in limp, unresisting fingers. Unfinished, unaddressed. Worthless. He flips the parchment over, seeking some clue, finds only a single name:_ Severus._


	5. Minerva

The Death Eater had stumbled, breathing raggedly as he knelt to wipe white hands over and over on the wet grass. Malfoy had lifted him up, black robes and pale hair in disarray.

Together they stood a single, fractured moment above Gideon's body, and the cloaked man had trembled, his shoulders hunched in a way that was tantalisingly familiar. With Lucius' arm supporting him, he turned away, his humourless laugh quickly stifled.

Trapped beneath the ruins, the tabby cat had watched them leave.

_Much later, kneeling before the white tomb, Minerva drew a sudden painful breath. She had almost forgotten._


	6. The Consequences of our Choices

**Author's Note:** The prompt for this drabble was an AU version of Severus' sorting, in which he does not end up in Slytherin. I took that prompt, and somehow turned it into this. Lol! and yes, I made him a Hufflepuff. Just cause they don't get nearly enough respect!

Pain. Searing. His blood aflame. Treacherous limbs rebel, fighting with the dirt, the air.

Unhinged, without direction, his mind wanders.

_You could be great, you know... You've cunning, oh goodness yes... And pride..._

Blinding, blinding agony. He hears the screams. "Crucio!"

_But then, you're full of damn fool courage too... _

"Crucio!" "Crucio!" In a moment of lucidity, he recognises Lucius's voice.

_Not giving anything away, are you?_ The memory persists. _Too sharp for your own good..._

Pain. Fire lancing through his mind.

_Will you be loyal then? Unshaken, through death and beyond?_

Falling through the fire. Blessed darkness engulfing him.


	7. Kostroma

**Author's Note: **The prompt for this one was to do a random search on Wikipedia, and write about whatever came up. This one's way over 100 words, but I like it anyways. Jaajaa.

_Kostroma._ The vengeful corpse of one who died. (Violently.) At night, he daubs the threshold with blood, says aloud the names of Gideon and Fabian. Instead, their black eyes stare from behind guarded windows.

_Kostroma._ A children's game. (A player fakes their own death.) Pettigrew whines, and bile twists in his gut. His games have never been a child's.

_Kostroma._ The Slavic word for bonfire. (An immense conflagration.) A white tomb, in the heart of the flames.

Severus twines the girl-child's head with flowers. Her dress is of blue cotton, like Lily's. He arranges the branches about her unresisting limbs, and with his wand sets her funeral pyre alight. _Kostroma._ A burnt offering to the god of war.


	8. Legilimency

_Legilimens!_

Dark eyes, boring into his. The flaring of power, as a mind grazes his own. Images slipping, elusive as shadows. A word, a whisper. He gives himself over to the dark.

They think him a guardian of lies. They stand in awe of his impassive mask. They are fools. No one can lie to the Dark Lord.

Riddle. Dumbledore. Himself, a pawn in their twisted game. A channel, through which they read what they will. Albus will die tonight. They know, and know the other knows. All in accordance with the plan.

Blue eyes, boring into his own.

_Legilimens! _


	9. Chuck Norris

**Author's Note:** The prompt for this one came from a random fact generator, which gives Chuck Norris-like quotes about the character of your choice...

* * *

Minerva kneaded her temples, glaring balefully over her glasses at the handful of battered first-years trembling in front of her desk.

"Well?" she snapped. "What happened?"

A small boy with a violently swollen lump on his forehead muttered something about Quidditch.

"First years are not allowed their own broomsticks." she snapped. "Next!"

"Someone jinxed the bludger..."

"Twenty points from Gryffindor. Next."

The plump, trembling child didn't say anything. He just dripped.

"Well?"

"Minerva," Poppy interjected in a motherly way. "They've just had their first potions lesson..."

Professor McGonagall groaned inwardly. Brooms and bludgers might break their bones, but Severus Snape's glares could liquefy kidneys.


	10. Wind of Blame

The wind whips the dark rags about him, stinging the lashes and the raw scars of their chains. He approaches, trembling.

In death, she is imperfect. Her face is sweeter than he remembers, without fire. Her nose is straight, lacking the tiny upwards tilt, her lips too full. Her left arm balances the child, an unnecessary stain, but the right hangs free, white fingers resting lightly on the air. Kneeling, he lets the pale hand find his cheek, forgets himself in the hollow nothingness of her marble benediction.

Suppliant in her monument's shadow, the terror of the wind is eased.


	11. Earth

_The first element, he teaches, is earth. _

Coarse clay beneath his fingernails, harvest of twisted roots, white hands working alongside his own. A bronze sickle slips, blood on the ice-bound earth.

Chared dirt in the rotting gaps beneath skirting boards in the dingy kitchen where he crouches, watching his mother brew a wakeless sleep. Eyelids heavy with the smoke; asphodel and clinging earth. Earth is his mother, and the first potion.

Sliding footprints in the chalk, hands that clutch at dust. Head bowed and retching upon damp grass. Bile and inexorable earth.

Earth is his father, and the first murder.


	12. Water

_The second element, he teaches, is water. _

The pool beyond the mill wheel, clear and brown like warm weak tea, where decaying leaves twist and curl upon the eddies. Lithe, mud slicked bodies, russet hair in the dappled sunlight.

Dormitory windows that open above a lake. Surface of ripleless obsidian, chill beneath the guardian moon. A breath, a plunge. His limbs, suddenly graceful, beaded with green-gold phosphorescence like spun glass.

Together, the two men heft Caradoc's body. Ice shatters with a report like gunfire. Water fountains up, showering him with splintered ice.

Water is Lily, Hogwarts, and the second murder.


	13. Fire

**Author's Note:** The line about "a fine blaze, sparks..." etc., and the one about "The fire it's too late to extinguish" are both pinched from 'The Fire Raisers', by Max Frisch.

* * *

_The third element, he teaches, is fire. _

He burnt himself in the light of a candle, reading curses by night.

A skull of emerald; blinding flame. Razed brand and charred flesh. A fine blaze, sparks, and human cries, and ashes. The inferno, gorgeous, mesmerising, where there was once a house in Godric's hollow.

Dumbledore, and the dark phoenix, raised from the ashes.

Flames beneath a stone mantle in Minerva's study. Warmth and old books, a chess set. Scottish whiskey and sympathy.

Eaters of death, murder and flame. The fire it's too late to extinguish.

He burnt himself in the light.


	14. Air

_The last element, he teaches, is air. _

They launch themselves from playground swings, weightless as dandelion seed. His hand in hers, he flies.

Without air, the human body can survive one hundred and eighty seconds. It is a scientifically recorded fact. Emmeline is a disappointment. She lasts only one hundred and twelve.

Broken puppet-corpse, suspended in a green-starred sky. But an old man without a wand cannot control the air. That is his alone.

_Earth and water, fire and air... _so many ways to die.

He launches himself from the castle windows. Weightless. His heart in hers, he flies.


End file.
